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Google Conspiracy Against the Public

Posted by msrb on July 31, 2008

Google Censorship is a Flagrant Violation of Our Freedom of Speech!

Freedom of speech is being able to speak freely without censorship. The United States Constitution protects opinions under inalienable 1st Amendment free speech rights.

The right to freedom of speech is also guaranteed under international law through numerous human-rights instruments, notably under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

How much longer is Google allowed to continue its censorship in violation of the United States Constitution and the international law?

“A Conspiracy Against the Public”

Haunted by Big, Bad Google

The Moderators at the Public Information Blogs listed below condemn Google Inc in the strongest possible terms for content censorship. Google search engines permanently or periodically exclude specific posts, contents or information from the blogs thereby abridging the freedom of speech, and denying the public their right to know!

Google Inc poses a clear and present danger to freedom of speech. To minimize this threat, we urge those of the lawmakers who still believe in the Constitution to break up Google into smaller, less harmful units.

This entry was posted on July 31, 2008 at 12:01 am and is filed under Big Bad Google, abridging the freedom of speech, government, politics. Tagged: , , , , , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

7 Responses to “Google Conspiracy Against the Public”

  1. r2streu said

    July 31, 2008 at 8:38 pm

    Actually, as a private entity, Google is well within its rights to abridge or disallow any speech it wants. It’s a crappy business decision, and (frankly)unethical, to boot, but the appropriate action is to boycott Google.

    The First Amendment and most Human Rights laws are focused on government, not private action. To say Google is violating the law by choosing to disallow certain sites, you’d also have to say that a privately-owned blog site or forum cannot deny publishing of a comment or ban a user.

    Just to be clear, by the way, the public Right To Know doesn’t exist in a legal context (that I’m aware of), excepting what pertains to FOIA laws.

  2. msrb said

    August 1, 2008 at 4:40 am

    The following reply was submitted by a Member.

    The facts are that:

    1. Dissemination and flow of information today play a much more critical role in the society than at any time past. Dissemination and flow of information are no longer “commercial considerations,” but vital matters of public health and safety, ergo Human Rights issues.

    2. Google has a dominant position [near monopoly] in the Internet information sector and is using its weight to abuse the dissemination and flow of information. [Antitrust law]

    3. By restricting the flow of information Google is harming the “consumer” welfare, which may include, but not limited to “free trading and competition.” [Antitrust law]

    4. Google’s domination of the information sector should at least be subject to “remedies,” an obligation to offer access to facilities that would allow both volunteer organizations [like us] and small commercial entities to “compete.” [Antitrust law]

    5. Google is expanding its power base, increasingly manipulating the flow of information and it is now more prominent in the control of information than the US govt.; therefore, it could be argued that Google is effectively operating as a “virtual government within a government,” thus Human Rights laws should apply.

    6. By selectively censoring and blocking information, Google is denying the individuals and organizations their “Freedom of Press,” therefore creating an “information apartheid” that breaches terms of International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights treaty among other treaty violations.

    You say, “… as a private entity, Google is well within its rights to abridge or disallow any speech it wants.”

    That would be true, only if (i) Google was one of MANY organizations that provided similar services, AND (ii) Google did not command a monopoly or near-monopoly status.

    “To say Google is violating the law by choosing to disallow certain sites, you’d also have to say that a privately-owned blog site or forum cannot deny publishing of a comment or ban a user.”

    Would it be acceptable for a privately-owned organization that had established an effective monopoly on, say, weather information [no national weather service available] to allow access only to selected individuals? [If not, could vital weather information be classed as a “public Right to Know?”]

    [Note: Try the above argument with other criteria, e.g., “immunization,” “toxic pollution,” “water safety” ... in addition to “weather information.”]

    7. If the current laws cannot adequately deal with the censorship of public information, thus failing to protect the society and the individual, clearly, new, effective laws are desperately needed!

  3. Image of the Day: Blocking the Internet « Fire Earth said

    August 1, 2008 at 4:47 am

    [...] Google’s Conspiracy Against the Public [...]

  4. terres said

    August 2, 2008 at 12:11 am

    r2streu – we’ve received your comment and will publish it when the Member who replied to your original comment is available to respond.

    To put this into some perspective, please let us know your affiliation. Are you a legal expert, or otherwise a law practitioner in any capacity?

  5. r2streu said

    August 4, 2008 at 3:44 am

    I’m a little confused as to why you’re holding my comment until the original responder is around to answer… but it’s your blog to do what you like.

    To answer the question, my affiliation and credentials are irrelevant to the discussion (and, frankly a smokescreen — I asked about facts and evidence and the response appears to be asking for my credentials). Suffice to say I am not on any legal team working with, for, or against Google, and have no stake in any litigation regarding Google. I work with a Conservative think-tank, along with my own activist group, and my interest is in defending liberty — even for those with whom I may personally disagree. I believe that the defense of liberty for one is the defense of liberty for all. That is my interest in this discussion.

  6. msrb said

    August 5, 2008 at 12:45 am

    The moderators appreciate your interest “in defending liberty — even for those with whom [you] may personally disagree.”

    To publish your 2nd comment would be tantamount to an Internet “trial” [c.f., the "O'Reilly Factor”] with the obvious twist that Google alone would be the beneficiary, regardless of who “wins” the argument.

    If the moderators were to respond in any detail to the questions you have raised, they would have to reveal the result of their research as well as strategy. If, on the other hand, they didn’t respond, your comment could be construed as “authority” on the issue, which might deter others from challenging Google.

    Based on the above, it has been decided not to publish your 2nd comment at this time.

  7. te2ataria said

    September 2, 2008 at 10:32 am

    Google censoring web content

    by Bill Thompson

    Should Google decide what counts as an unacceptable website? Technology consultant Bill Thompson doesn’t think so.

    Since its creation in 1998 Google – at http://www.google.com, as you probably know already – has become the world’s best search engine and the starting point of choice for almost all my web queries.

    It has even generated its own verb – to do some googling around means sitting there playing with queries and exploring the obscure parts of the Web that are revealed by looking for odd or even improperly spelled phrases.

    Nobody expects Google, or any index, to be perfect, since the Web is growing and changing so fast and many parts of it are generated from databases and therefore essentially impossible for a search engine to find or classify.

    However, researchers at the highly-respected Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University have found that the company is actively removing sites from its database, and that this censorship is going unnoticed.

    Regional differences

    Jonathan Zittrain and Benjamin Edelman have built up a reputation for their careful analysis of the ways in which web content is filtered, censored and controlled.

    They have looked in detail at the practices of national governments, specifically China and Saudi Arabia, and provided lots of useful information for those of us who want to promote freedom of speech both online and offline.

    The censorship of the French and German versions of the Google database is a clear demonstration of just what is wrong with internet regulation today – Bill Thompson

    Their latest paper deals with the differences between the results returned when searching google.com, the US/world version of the site, the French site at google.fr and the German site at google.de.

    They have discovered over one hundred sites which can be found by searchers in the US but not by those in Germany or France.

    They are mostly sites that feature racist material or that deny the existence of the Holocaust, such as Stormfront, a white pride site filled with white nationalist essays by former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.

    Legal battles

    Responding to the discovery, Google spokesman Nate Tyler said on tech news programme ZDNN that the sites were removed to avoid the possibility of legal action being taken against the company, and that each site was removed only after a specific complaint from the government of the country concerned.

    On first sight this seems perfectly reasonable – after all, Google isn’t a public service but a private company trying to make money out of its technology and database, and it has no obligation to index everything.

    It certainly has a duty to its owners (it’s a privately held company) to stay out of legal battles with governments, since they can be pretty expensive.

    Unfortunately things are not that simple, and the censorship of the French and German versions of the Google database is a clear demonstration of just what is wrong with internet regulation today.

    What is happening is that a government is saying to Google: ‘we don’t like that website – so drop it from your database’ and the company is acquiescing.

    The people running the website aren’t told. The people looking for the website aren’t told – they aren’t even told that this policy exists.

    The rest of us aren’t being told either – Google’s Nate Tyler said clearly that ‘as a matter of company policy we do not provide specific details about why or when we removed any one particular site from our index.’

    No due process

    The result is that one of the web’s most important tools is being deliberately broken at the request of governments, with no publicity, no legal review and no court orders.

    The sites involved may or may not be illegal in France or Germany – we don’t know because the case never comes to court, and is never tested. All we know is that they aren’t wanted.

    I would rather have a net where Google and other search engine providers had a legal obligation to provide full and comprehensive results to the best of their technical ability – Bill Thompson

    The problem is not that content is being censored – that is inevitable and in many cases desirable.

    I agree with our current laws against child pornography and have no difficulty at all endorsing the view that these sites should not be allowed online.

    I’ll support the team at Google if they want to spend their time removing them. In fact, a search for ‘lolita pictures’ finds 291,000 entries in the US index, so this is obviously less of a priority for them.

    The problem is that Google itself is deciding what should be censored and that its motives are entirely commercial, making it possible for government agencies to influence it without having to go through due process or defend their requests in public.

    I believe we need to move towards an internet that is properly regulated, where decisions like this can only be made through the courts.

    I would rather have a net where Google and other search engine providers had a legal obligation to provide full and comprehensive results to the best of their technical ability and to inform searchers of any areas where content had been removed from their index on legal grounds, even if that also gives governments the ability to block certain sites from the index.

    Telling nobody

    As it is, we have private companies like Google deciding what we can and can’t see based on their self-interested readings of poorly-drafted national laws – Bill Thompson

    I know that would give the government of the People’s Republic of China the power to censor what their citizens can see online – but they have that power already and use it, building firewalls and filters around their part of the net.

    At least if the whole internet was properly regulated and brought into the legal framework that governs all other areas of our life we would be able to have a sensible discussion about the limits of regulation and control.

    As it is, we have private companies like Google deciding what we can and can’t see based on their self-interested readings of poorly-drafted national laws, taking advice from unnamed and unaccountable Government agencies and telling nobody what is going on.

    Anything has to be better than that, surely?

    And what happens when someone in the French Ministry of Culture reads this article and decides that, by giving publicity to Stormfront, I am acting against the French public interest?

    Will they dispatch a quick e-mail to Google and ask them to remove this page – or this whole site – from their index?

    Copyright Bill Thompson or the BBC

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